William Adams, the Texas judge who was suspended last year after a nearly 8-minute video from 2004 of him beating his then 16-year old, disabled daughter with a whip for downloading music off the Internet surfaced on YouTube, has been reinstated to his previous position. Adams was never prosecuted for the crime because too much time (7 years) had passed to bring criminal charges against the judge. His 2013 salary will be cut 1.6% to $144,000 and he “may no longer preside over the physical domestic abuse cases that previously comprised much of his court docket.”

The
holidays aren’t always warm and fuzzy like a Hallmark card for divorced and
separated parents. Phones start ringing off the hook in family law offices all
over the country including Fleischer & Associates as families start
squabbling over custody and visitation schedules, winter vacations and even
gift-giving. Serious fears about non-custodial parent abductions and
unsupervised visits can arise.

Believe
it or not, most attorneys would rather enjoy the holidays with our own families
than rush into court to file emergency legal documents for stressed out clients
during the season. Due to the recent court cutbacks, emergency filings are an
even greater strain on everyone. This is the time to think ahead, anticipate
and solve problems so you can enjoy your holiday season with minimum stress for
you and your children.

The Baby Boom generation has had a large effect on demographic trends
over the past 50 years. In young adulthood, they pushed up the divorce
rate to unprecedented numbers, which raised many questions about the
impact of divorce on their children. Now that this generation is mostly
over 50 years of age, it is interesting to look at what has been
happening with regards to their divorce rate in middle age and consider
new questions about the impact of divorce on their well-being and their
relationships with their children.

Courtney G. Joslin (University of California, Davis - School of Law) has posted "Marriage, Biology, and Federal Benefits" (forthcoming Iowa Law Review). Here is the abstract:

This Article approaches the topic of same-sex marriage from a novel perspective by scrutinizing the historical accuracy of primary defense proffered by same-sex marriage opponents – “responsible procreation.” In the context of challenges to Section 3 of DOMA, responsible procreation posits that the federal government’s historic purpose in extending marital benefits is to single out and specially support families with biologically-related children. Because same-sex couples cannot fulfill this long-standing purpose, it is permissible to deny them all federal marital rights and obligations. While advocates disagree about whether and to what extent DOMA furthers this alleged federal interest, to date, all sides have accepted this historical account.

This Article is the first to interrogate the accuracy of this account. To do so, the Article examines two of the largest and most important federal benefits programs – Social Security benefits and benefits for active and retired members of the U.S. military. This analysis demonstrates that Congress has not and does not condition the receipt of federal family-based benefits on biological parent-child relationships. To the contrary, Congress long has implicitly and explicitly extended such benefits to families with children known to be biologically unrelated to one or both of their parents. This Article thus reveals that responsible procreation is based on myth, not history and tradition.